Damaged Goods Read Online Free PDF

sizable flashlight, and shined it on a paper bag in his other hand. He cast the beam out across the murky orchard. “I came through there. I live on the other side. It’s a shortcut—well, not really a shortcut. It’s almost a half mile. But I take it all the time.”
    “A shortcut?”
    “Yeah.” He stepped closer, but stopped. “I’ve frightened you. I’m sorry.”
    “Or maybe you didn’t want anyone to know you’re here, that’s why you came through the trees,” she stuttered.
    “See me here? I—” Hershel looked around again, as if there might be some explanation for her behavior written in the darkness. “I own the place.”
    He took a tentative step forward, holding the bag out to her as if she were a cornered animal. “I brought you a sandwich. I thought you might be hungry. I’ll just be going. I didn’t mean to scare you. Really.”
    She squinted at him, knife still poised. “A what?”
    “A sand-wich,” Hershel repeated. “It’s … cheese. I think.”
    Silvie dropped her hand to her side. “I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I thought. You just scared me. I didn’t see you there.”
    “It’s okay.” He set the bag on her car and headed toward the orchard, clicking the flashlight on and off as he went.
    “Wait,” she called after him. “Please.”
    He turned back, but didn’t come any closer.
    “You’ve been so nice, and I’ve treated you awful. I’m sorry.”
    “You don’t know me. It’s okay.”

    Upstairs, Silvie wrapped herself in the blanket she’d dug from her car and sat remorsefully on the sofa, holding the soggy paper lunch bag on her lap.
    “He must be wishing he’d never stopped to help me,” she muttered.
    In the morning, when it was light, she would pull everything out of her car to get to the box, then leave Hershel a thank-you note and head for the coast on foot. But she wouldn’t go to Lincoln City. She’d already left a trail. She’d go north, to Astoria, cross into Washington, and head up the Olympic Peninsula. She’d have to risk it hitchhiking. She wouldn’t stay here for two more days; she couldn’t even imagine facing Hershel in the morning.
    She opened the bag and pulled out a cheese sandwich on whole-wheat bread with mustard. She also extracted a Bosc pear and held it to her nose for a long moment, inhaling its sweetness. Pears were her favorite. She peered inside the bag and found at the bottom a small package of candy corn with a black jack-o’-lantern and HAPPY HALLOWEEN printed across the cellophane.
    “He gave me candy corn.” She held a piece up to the light, as if examining the man who’d brought it.

4
    Silvie was awakened by a loud clatter below, and for a brief, panicked moment she couldn’t remember where she was. A man shouted something, then the floor beneath her vibrated as the overhead door in the warehouse went up. She flew from the foldout bed into the bathroom, craning to see down to the parking lot below.
    She’d overslept. The sun was well up, and two men were unloading some sort of combine or swather from a flatbed truck. A third shouted directions as they placed the hulking piece of green equipment so snugly against the rear of her car that she would never be able to get to the hatchback.
    She forced the window open and pressed her face against the dusty screen, ready to shout down to them. Cool, moist air rushed in at her. Sweet with the scent of rotting cedar and mist.
    “We’ll put the Charger right there,” one of the men hollered across the lot. He was stout, with a neatly trimmed beard, and he pointed at the space on the other side of her car. “It’s what people will want to get a look at, I expect.” He planted himself with a cocky, wide-legged stance and spotted the driver.
    Silvie watched as another flatbed backed in. On its platform sat a ruined Dodge Charger. It must have been well cared for at onetime—its paint still glossy red, though crumpled and distorted. The tires were